The United States has had popular elections for U.S. Senate starting in 1914. In the entire history of these elections, there had never been a U.S. Senate election in which the combined Democratic-Republican Party vote for U.S. Senate had fallen below one-third of the vote, until November 7, 2006. In that election, in Vermont, over two-thirds of the voters chose someone who wasn’t a Democrat or a Republican. Of course, the vast bulk of this “other” vote went to Bernie Sanders, who received 65% of the vote. The total “other” vote in the Vermont race was 67.6%.

Previous to 2006, the record had been in Minnesota in 1928, when 66.3% of the voters had voted for someone other than a Democrat or Republican.